JBrown72073 at cs.com wrote:
>
>
> I've had the experience of trying to make cogent points in 3 minutes at
> rallies and it's not so much that one can't spit out points--one hopes in an
> interesting way--but that it's hard to so quickly engage people so they'll
> give a damn what you're saying.
>
It seems to me three minutes is enough. Ten 2 or 3 minute speeches might make an interesting rally -- merely as a bit of punctuation for the march, the purpose of which is, after all, only to recognize each other's presence. A speech will grab the audience if and only if it says what they have already been thinking but don't know they are thinking. Arguments are completely out of place in front of mass audiences.
I understand that Castro's long speeches did hold his audiences -- but that was in a culture in which (pre-Revolution) literacy was low, and political conditions made the audience's hungry for knowledge, which could be offered in no other way.
Cogent points should be reserved for print or for small group discussion.
Carrol